Kiniro Mosaic Pretty Days is the third anime installment of Kiniro Mosaic series and the first that comes in movie format. It was released on theater on November 12, 2016. The duration of the film is 50 minutes which is rather short. But even for that short duration, the content is filled with greatness and highly impressive story that might inspire or at least impressed you. The studio behind this anime is still Studio Gokumi which is also behind the TV series.

StoryThe main focus on the movie story is on Shino, Youko, and Aya. We’ll go flashback on their middle school life during the time they prepared themselves to enter Moegi High School. The flashback stars after Alice and Karen ask about how Shino was able to enter the high school.

On the flashback, we will see that Shino, Youko, and Aya are discussing their future plan about high school. Aya was recommended to enter Soiren High School which is a prestigious private high school for women. Shino and Youko are clearly out of league. Then Aya tell them about another popular high school which is a public one. They make their way to visit the high school and accidentally meet Karasuma-sensei who later give them a tour on school. Karasuma-sensei also motivates them, especially Shino so they could pass the entrance school test.

Shino and Youko study hard with the help of Aya. The three of them study together for the entrance test. Aya still has Soiren High School as her #1 choice but she still takes the entrance test to Moegi High School together with Shino and Youko. Later, it was told that Aya passed the entrance test to Soiren high school and Moegi high school. Shino and Youko are also managed to pass the entrance test to Moegi High School. As we already know, Aya dropped her priority on Soiren High School and decided to enter Moegi High School.

After that, we go back to the present story line where Shino prepares stuffs for the school festival with her friends helping her. And the story continues to the day of the school festival happens.

AnimationAs you can see from some of the screen shots I posted. The animation looks very good. The character design is still the same which is good. The background is artistic just like the usual style of Kiniro Mosaic. It’s like painting and they keep the style consistent. The color is a bit off. For the first time, I need to boost the color and contrast while lowering the brightness on Nvidia Control Panel to achieve better looks. It is because the color looks kinda pale on default settings, even on Samsung Super AMOLED 4K Panel which already produced oversaturated colors.

MusicOne of the strongest side of Kiniro Mosaic is it’s excellent music, both the Background Musics and Theme Songs. This time, I’d say the music is on masterpiece level. It fits on every scene beautifully, making impression on each scene deeper. This level of work is more or less on par with Hibike Euphonium although Kiniro Mosaic doesn’t involve music on its story. There are 3 theme songs in the film. The opening theme Happy★Pretty★Clover, the insert song during the festival is Shining Star, and the ending theme is Starring!!. All of them are performed by Rhodanthe* which is consists of Nishi Asuka, Tanaka Manami, Uchiyama Yumi, Taneda Risa, and Touyama Nao who also voiced the main characters.

CharactersThis time, we see another side of the main characters. We see how Aya feel not close enough to Shino because she only knows her from middle school and she doesn’t have blonde hair. But later, Aya realized that Shino doesn’t need that to acknowledge Aya as her close friend. We also know both Shino’s and Youko’s past on how they work really hard to study so they can enter their choice of high school. And we also know that they could make it all the way here because of Aya. So, Aya’s role in the anime is actually bigger than we knew. Alice and Karen are kinda left out in the story focus this time but they already plenty of story on the TV series, so I think it is acceptable.

Voice ActingThe voice acting is fairly consistent. Everyone did a great job with their role. Tane-chan is still the one lagging behind the others and I think Tane-chan’s performance as Aya is not as good as on Hello! Kiniro Mosaic even though Aya got more attention in this film. This is to be last voice acting from Tane-chan before she went hiatus until now due to unknown disease. The best voice acting in this anime film still belongs to Satou Satomi as Karasuma-sensei and Tamura Yukari as Isami who performs close to excellent. The rest of the casts, Nishi Asuka as Shino, Tanaka Manami as Alice, Uchiyama Yumi as Youko, and Touyama Nao as Karen did very good.

Final ThoughtsAlthough the story doesn’t provide us with much story progress after the ending of Hello! Kiniro Mosaic, it still a highly impressive story. If you remembered the impression of Kiniro Mosaic 1st episode where Shino travels to England to meet Alice’s family, the story in this anime film left us with a similarly (deep) impression. It’s about friendship, a deep one. The background music delivers deeper impression because Kiniro Mosaic Pretty Days surely have a masterpiece work of music. Animation still have the most room for improvement though. Voice acting are fairly consistent throughout the series (not just this movie) although I feel a bit weird with Tane-chan’s slightly degraded voice acting here. For those who haven’t followed Kiniro Mosaic, it’s hard to recommend this anime film. For the fans, this is certainly something you must not miss. Although this is just a 50 minutes anime film, this is the best work of Kiniro Mosaic, the only Kiniro Mosaic I rated as Masterpiece, and finally The Best of All Anime in 2016.

Story

10

Animation

7

Sounds & Musics

10

Characters

9

Voice Acting

8

Overall

10

Rated as

Masterpiece

Pros :(+) Best work of Kiniro Mosaic
(+) Strong story impression
(+) Great music
(+) Keeping the consistency of the TV Series

Cons :(-) Tane-chan voice acting could be better
(-) No new progress on the present story timeline